Although he does not necessarily agree with the direction of the article that ran in Saturday's The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Director of Athletics Kirby Hocutt said he cannot dispute the facts.
Obviously
we are concerned about the large number. We are embarrassed about the large number Hocutt said of the 17 Ohio football players that have been arrested in Athens County in the past nine months.
We were disappointed that more of our conversation with that reporter was not reflected in the article but
nonetheless
the facts are the facts
and we take those facts very seriously.
Hocutt said that he and Ohio football coach Frank Solich met with The Dispatch's Randy Ludlow for an hour Thursday night to discuss the disciplinary actions taken against the 17 aforementioned athletes.
Solich said that he was disappointed that the interview did not focus on some of the positive things the football team has accomplished academically since he took over in 2005.
I was hoping that the article was not pre-written
Solich said. I was hoping that (Ludlow) would look at a number of issues and a number of individual cases. I was ready to discuss each individual case and ready to go through our entire policy as far as disciplinary action
but he didn't necessarily want to take the time to do that.
The last paragraph of Ludlow's article mentions that the team's 2.7 grade-point average last year was the highest since 1997 and ranks third in the Mid-American Conference, an accomplishment that Solich does not want to go unnoticed.
What I tried to get across was that our disciplinary actions start with academics
Solich said. We put it in place. We first started to deal with players that maybe were late to class
didn't attend class
missed study halls or didn't get enough study hall hours. We have a disciplined program that checks these players in everything they're doing while they're here on campus.
Saturday's article in The Dispatch came just four days after The New York Times ran an article outlining many problems that have plagued the university in the last year.
We are embarrassed by those facts being out in the public
